


Undiminished somewhere

by Lilliburlero



Category: David Blaize - E. F. Benson
Genre: First Kiss, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mid-Canon, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 07:39:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1771078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the close of Frank and David's 'immortal day,' things get complicated.</p><p>*</p><p>Content advisory: kissing and implications of sexual arousal between characters aged 15 and 18 respectively, all the (canonical) internalized homophobia you can shake a stick at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undiminished somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StripySock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/gifts).



> Roughly in the vicinity of StripySock's prompt, 'Frank Maddox, strikhedonia' (i.e., the pleasure of saying 'to hell with it').
> 
> * 
> 
> The title is from Philip Larkin's 'Sad Steps.'

Having suffered from it since childhood, Frank Maddox took the robust view that insomnia could be controlled by reasonable use of the will and vigorous bodily exercise.  Tonight, however, he thought that his sleeplessness might be the result of over- rather than under-exertion of both mental and physical faculties.  He drew back the curtains and sat in the wicker basket-chair looking through the French windows at the moonlit lawn, half-wishing he smoked, though one reason he had not adopted the ruinous habit was that he should be tempted to it on wakeful nights: in the dormitory at school, that would be the worst of torments. No, not the worst, he reflected ruefully.  But an additional one.

He paced, reciting Swinburne, Shakespeare, Keats and Housman under his breath; and when his store of literature was gone, declined Greek nouns. Finally, he threw himself upon a higher power than mortal mind, and his knees.  He repeated the formulae of school chapel and Sunday church, becoming gradually and devastatingly aware of the difference between _being taught one’s prayers_ and _learning how to pray_.  Did David, whose father was, after all, a clergyman—Frank let out a soft sound somewhere between a growl and a sob—no, damn it, he was not going to think about what David knew how to do and didn’t.

There were plenty of agreeable and wholesome things in the world to think of that did not threaten their friendship.  To recall the alarmed, unhappy expression David returned to his intimate, charming, encouraging one that afternoon in the bathroom brought shame; to remember him staggering after Frank had beaten him, his blue eyes become dark tarns in a chalky face, perverse pleasure.  He would not hurt David _for the world_ (that was true, for what eighteen-year-old imagination can encompass possession of the world?) yet for the joy of holding him in his arms to comfort him afterwards, he would torture him.

Frank shocked himself with this thought, and disposed of it with an intellectual manoeuvre analogous to shoving a soiled ball of clothing into the back of a drawer. But that in turn recalled their morning’s conversation about Hughes, his appalling, trimming conditional, which had slipped out lightly under the guise of weighty confession.  _Might have been_ where _was_ should be: _might have been_ in regard to David; _was_ in regard to Hughes himself.  Not to mention the others.  And David had misunderstood him exactly as he had not even consciously meant he should, jawing devotedly away about the good turn Frank had done him.  It had been very nearly insupportable—

Frank heard a low, unmistakable whistle from the other side of the connecting door. He let his face fall flat for a moment into the counterpane, then jumped to his feet, quickly and unconvincingly disordered the bedclothes, and went to open it.

‘Hullo, David.  Can’t sleep?’

‘I thought I heard you moving about—and—make a sort of a noise.  I wondered if you were poorly. The lobster?’

‘Dear me, no.  Haven’t you ever had bad seafood?  Jolly good for you if you haven’t.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’  David took a step back.

‘I was just watching the moon.  With how sad steps.’

‘Sad—what—?’

‘Sir Philip Sidney. Tremendous chap, gave a common soldier his flask of water when he was dying of wounds.’

‘Oh yes, I know that.’  

‘Well, he wrote sonnets too.  Snatch up your dressing gown, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll read it to you by her light,  It’s one I don’t have by heart; I should.’

‘It’s miles too warm. If—you don’t mind.’

Frank had omitted to put on his own.  ‘I think,’ he said gravely, with his mother’s intonation, ‘that since it’s just the two of us, we needn’t dress.’  One of the pleasures of conversation with David, he considered, was that one could make that kind of joke and not have it taken for a cheap one.

There was not quite enough moonlight to read by, as it happened, so rather than turn on the electric light and risk disturbing the house, Frank lit the two candles in the brass holders on on the chimneypiece. He took down Symons’ _Sixteenth Century Anthology,_ and settled himself in the basket chair.

David dithered rather, until Frank exclaimed,

‘Come—here, look—’ and patted the Berlin-work footrest, a kind of large, secular hassock, that lay just to the left of the chair.  

‘It’s where you always sit, you see,’ he explained, as David curled himself up on it, his arm around his knees. 

‘But I’ve never been here befor—’ 

‘ _David_.’

‘Oh.’  His eyes widened and he bit his lower lip.  ‘ _Really_? How _ripping_.’

‘ _Alors, écoute_!’

Frank had the ample leisure of a hundred and forty syllables to repent his choice and his want of memory, for though he had quite forgotten how self-pitying and piquish a sonneteer could be, he remembered as soon has he had laid the book open at the right page.  But he ploughed on— _what may I do_ , he thought, remembering another sonnet altogether— _but in the field with him to live and die_.

> O Moon, tell me,   
>  Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?   
>  Are beauties there as proud as here they be?   
>  Do they above love to be loved, and yet   
>  Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?   
>  Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?

Frank loved David’s slow, apprehending look, for it was David’s, but not even candlelight could make it vivacious.

‘Isn’t it queer,’ David said, ‘that a great man like Sidney should play at Man-in-the-Moon?’

‘Rather nice, don't you think?’ Frank said, relieved that David’s mind had battened with innocent instinct to that boyish aspect of the poem. ‘It doesn’t diminish him a bit to know that he could be playful.’

‘Just like you.’

‘Like me?  Whatever do you mean?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’  David flushed deeply.

‘I shan’t press you—but sure you wouldn’t like to say?’

‘It’s fearfully silly.  I wish I’d not mentioned it.’  He shuffled around on the hassock, leaning his back against the arm of the chair and stretching his long legs before him.  Frank was about to change the subject when he gabbled,  ‘Just that day when Margery and I met with you in Baxminster, and you came to tea, well, we’d been saying how frightfully dull and kiddish our old games in the attic had been.  And then when we showed you, they—they _sparkled_ again.’

‘Oh, _David_.’  Frank put out his hand affectionately, recanting only when it was already in David’s hair, which inadvertently turned intended ruffle into exquisite caress.  He felt for a moment as if his chest had opened, to reveal there a howling black miasma. But David just stretched, folding his hands on the back of his neck, and yawned.  As he released his arms, he let the right fall across Frank’s knees.

‘You’re tired, old thing,’ Frank said, dislodging it with a movement that felt almost natural, as if he meant to stand, but he did not.  ‘We’re due on the links at nine. You should go back to bed.’

‘Yes, all right.’ David slid off the hassock and sat with his right leg folded underneath him, the left bent but sprawled out, his right hand resting on the arm of the chair.  Frank wondered when he had ceased fidgeting himself into awkward attitudes like that: he didn’t remember consciously stopping, but he knew at David’s age he had, and no longer did. 

‘We don’t call it so, do we?’ David asked.

Baffled, Frank imagined tossing a coin on the first tee.

‘Call what what, dear?’  A chill passed over his scalp at having let slip such an endearment, but David only smiled.

‘Virtue ungratefulness.’

‘I certainly don’t.  I meant what I said about salvation, pi-jaw as it might have sounded.’

‘It didn’t.  It sounded splendid.  But it got me to thinking.  Just now, when I was lying awake.’

‘You _mustn’t_ think about it, though. I mean, what gave rise to it.’

‘Mustn’t I? But how are we supposed to know the difference between good and evil things if we don’t—’

Frank was prepared for that bit of puerile sophistry, having once or twice made use of it himself, tricked out gaily in Milton’s _Areopagitica_.  ‘That’s damned foolish as well as bad doctrine.’

He spoke gently, but in a tone that at school would have meant the end of the matter.  But on this holiday footing of uncertain equality, David persisted.

‘I don’t mean you should do things you know to be wrong for the sake of proving them so.  That would be asinine.  I mean you should think about why things are wrong and not take it for granted they are because it’s what you’re told.  Because you might be told all sorts of things and it wouldn’t do to go believing them all.’

Frank smiled, because no-one he knew, not even his seven-year-old cousin, believed as much of what he was told as David. ‘As long as you don’t start making excuses for the wicked things you like to do not really being wicked at all, I think that’s sound enough.  But that’s what you risk doing, you know, and why you mustn’t contemplate too much on it.’

‘I don’t like to. When I come across something filthy I want to shut the door on it and turn the key.  But anyway, I wasn’t.  What I was really thinking about was the opposite.’

Frank made a quiet interrogative noise.

‘I was wondering what makes a good action good. You decided to keep me away from—nasty habits, and vile company. Why did you do it, when you hadn’t before?’

‘I—saw how miserable it once made you, to see it in me.  Uneasy—frightened, almost.  And I couldn’t bear it that you should be afraid—of anything, but especially of me.’

David folded his arms on Frank’s knees and rested his head on them.  Frank knew he should throw him off, but the guileless gesture was actually fortifying.

‘You see, that’s it exactly.  That’s what I thought.  What made it good wasn’t just that you set yourself against beastliness—that’s the easy part; anyone might do that—’

Glad David could not see his face, Frank permitted himself a grimace and a raised eyebrow.

‘—but that you did it because you saw how wretched it would make me to refuse you anything you wanted—that I simply _couldn’t_ refuse you.  And isn’t that why the Head always expels?  Because the younger fellow is always forced, even if he thinks he’s not.’

‘’Tisn’t exactly, you know.  But never mind that for now. I like your version better than the true one, I think.  It’s cleaner, somehow; smells of soap and the sea-strand, like you do.’  He stroked the towy curls, unselfconsciously this time. ‘You have a damnable capacious organ of ratiocination in there, David.  I haven’t made you work it nearly hard enough.  And without sleep it won’t be a bit of use to you, so run along to bed, do.’  

Had Frank’s reflex movements been a shade less acute, he should certainly have found himself at that moment in the midst of an overbalanced welter of wicker, limbs, and awakened, scandalised household.  But some anticipatory instinct into which he chose not to enquire too deeply caused him to adopt a self-preserving braced posture as his arms and lap were filled with very exigent David Blaize.  David would be taller and heavier than he by the end of next half, he reflected with the odd indolence borne of surprise.  David’s lips were dry, pressed hard together and to his; to hell with it all, Frank thought dimly and incoherently, the boy would have to be taught something before he did this to a chap's sister.  He eased his head to one side, murmuring nonsense syllables as he might to a shying horse; David slid to the floor between Frank's opened legs.

In candle- and moonlight David’s face looked not unlike it had after Frank had whacked him nearly into a swoon—not so pale, for he was sunburnt, but drawn of its customary ruddiness, eyes and open mouth like holes poked in sand.

‘Did you do that because you thought to please me, David?’

David shook his head.  ‘Myself, I think.  I’m not sure,’  he gasped.

‘You must be, you know, before you try to kiss someone again.  Catch your breath.’

‘I am sure. I want to do it again. Better than _try_.’

‘Come here a moment, then.’  David knelt up. Frank stroked his cheek, then cradled his face in both hands, sliding his thumbs along his cheekbones. Not knowing quite what to do with his own hands, it seemed, David let them dangle by his sides, then planted them heavily on Frank’s thighs. The hot moisture of his palms was instantly palpable through linen pyjamas; in other circumstances it might have been faintly repulsive, but it could act now as no check to Frank's growing immodesty.  Frank kissed him as tenderly as as was compatible with this rude condition; meeting only encouragement, he tried David’s closed lips with his tongue, provoking not just acquiescence but gloriously inexpert reciprocity.  David flung his arms around Frank’s waist, drawing him down from the chair.  In another moment they would be rolling on the floor, their bodies pressed together, legs entwined, and they should be wholly lost.

Frank broke the embrace roughly and backed onto the chair, settling rather awkwardly on his left haunch, half-crossing his legs at the knee.

‘It won’t do, Blazes. I shouldn’t have let you.  And after you said—’ he choked, ‘the younger boy is always forced—I deserve hanging by the neck.’

‘What rot. I meant at school he is.’  

‘We _are_ at school, my dear.  We have to go back next month with this between us.’

‘That's not for _ages_ yet,’ David said, with all the temporal myopia of his fifteen years. ‘This is different; it's not beastly a bit.  It’s not at all like what went on with—’ he struggled to get the name out— ‘ _Hughes_ —’

His eyes met Frank’s in terrible, stricken understanding.

‘Go to bed, David.’

‘I shan’t.  I can’t be separated from you now.  Not by even as much as that door.  I don’t care what you’ve done.’

‘Go to your room, damn you.’  Frank meant to use his unanswerable Head of House voice: what emerged instead was an unsteady, _sotto voce_ roar.  He collected himself.  

‘I’m sorry.  Do go to bed.  I’ll sit with you until you drop off to sleep if you like.’  

‘Yes, please, Frank.  I should love it.’

Frank fetched and donned his dressing-gown, though his brow, neck and chest were loathly sweaty.  He snuffed one of the candles and picked up the other, standing with it in the connecting doorway as David got into bed and pulled the sheet up to his chin. He put the light down on the bedside cabinet, picked up the ladder-backed wooden chair from its place beside the washstand and carried it over to the bedside.  David put an obstinate arm outside the sheet.  

‘I say, would it bore you frightfully to hold my hand?’

‘Frightfully. Good night, David.’

Frank put out the candle.

‘Good night, Frank.  What a pity it can’t be this morning again.’

‘It can’t.  No use wishing that.’

But before it could properly be said to be the next one, Frank had lain down beside his friend, reconciled for the night in sleep.


End file.
